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<h2 id="chown">Chown</h2>
<p><em>Since Apache Ant 1.6</em>.</p>
<h3>Description</h3>

<p>Changes the owner of a file or all files inside specified directories. Right now it has effect
only under Unix.  The owner attribute is equivalent to the corresponding argument for
the <kbd>chown</kbd> command.</p>

<p><a href="../Types/fileset.html">FileSet</a>s, <a href="../Types/dirset.html">DirSet</a>s
or <a href="../Types/filelist.html">FileList</a>s can be specified using
nested <code>&lt;fileset&gt;</code>, <code>&lt;dirset&gt;</code> and <code>&lt;filelist&gt;</code>
elements.</p>

<p><em>Since Ant 1.7</em>, this task supports
arbitrary <a href="../Types/resources.html#collection">resource collections</a> as nested
elements.</p>

<p>By default this task will use a single invocation of the underlying <kbd>chown</kbd> command.
If you are working on a large number of files this may result in a command line that is too long for
your operating system.  If you encounter such problems, you should set the <var>maxparallel</var>
attribute of this task to a non-zero value.  The number to use highly depends on the length of your
file names (the depth of your directory tree) and your operating system, so you'll have to
experiment a little.  POSIX recommends command line length limits of at least 4096 characters, this
may give you an approximation for the number you could use as initial value for these
experiments.</p>

<p>By default this task won't do anything unless it detects it is running on a Unix system.  If you
know for sure that you have a <kbd>chown</kbd> executable on your <code>PATH</code> that is command
line compatible with the Unix command, you can use the task's <var>os</var> attribute and set its
value to your current OS.</p>

<h3>Parameters</h3>
<table class="attr">
  <tr>
    <th scope="col">Attribute</th>
    <th scope="col">Description</th>
    <th scope="col">Required</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>file</td>
    <td>the file or directory of which the owner must be
    changed.</td>
    <td>Yes, unless nested <code>&lt;fileset|filelist|dirset&gt;</code> elements are specified</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>owner</td>
    <td>the new owner.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>parallel</td>
    <td>process all specified files using a single <kbd>chown</kbd> command.</td>
    <td>No; defaults to <q>true</q></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>type</td>
    <td>One of <q>file</q>, <q>dir</q> or <q>both</q>. If set to <q>file</q>, only the owner of
      plain files are going to be changed. If set to <q>dir</q>, only the directories are
      considered.<br/><strong>Note</strong>: The <var>type</var> attribute does not apply to
      nested <code>dirset</code>s&mdash;<code>dirset</code>s always implicitly assume type to
      be <q>dir</q>.</td>
    <td>No; default is <q>file</q></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>maxparallel</td>
    <td>Limit the amount of parallelism by passing at most this many sourcefiles at once.  Set it to
      negative integer for unlimited.</td>
    <td>No; defaults to unlimited</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>verbose</td>
    <td>Whether to print a summary after execution or not.</td>
    <td>No; defaults to <q>false</q></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>os</td>
    <td>list of Operating Systems on which the command may be executed.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>osfamily</td>
    <td>OS family as used in the <a href="../Tasks/conditions.html#os">&lt;os&gt;</a>
      condition.</td>
    <td>No; defaults to <q>unix</q></td>
  </tr>
</table>
<h3>Examples</h3>

<p>Make the <samp>start.sh</samp> file belong to <samp>coderjoe</samp> on a UNIX system.</p>
<pre>&lt;chown file="${dist}/start.sh" owner="coderjoe"/&gt;</pre>

<p>Make all <samp>.sh</samp> files below <samp>${dist}/bin</samp> belong to <samp>coderjoe</samp> on
a UNIX system.</p>
<pre>
&lt;chown owner="coderjoe"&gt;
  &lt;fileset dir="${dist}/bin" includes="**/*.sh"/&gt;
&lt;/chown&gt;</pre>

<p>Make all files below <samp>shared/sources1</samp> (except those below any directory
named <samp>trial</samp>) belong to <samp>coderjoe</samp> on a UNIX system. In addition, all files
belonging to a FileSet with <var>id</var>=<code>other.shared.sources</code> get the same owner.</p>
<pre>
&lt;chown owner="coderjoe"&gt;
  &lt;fileset dir="shared/sources1"&gt;
    &lt;exclude name="**/trial/**"/&gt;
  &lt;/fileset&gt;
  &lt;fileset refid="other.shared.sources"/&gt;
&lt;/chown&gt;</pre>

<p>Make <samp>cgi</samp> scripts, files with a <samp>.old</samp> extension or directories beginning
with <samp>private_</samp> belong to the user named <samp>webadmin</samp>. A directory ending
in <samp>.old</samp> or a file beginning with <samp>private_</samp> would remain unaffected.</p>
<pre>
&lt;chown owner="webadmin" type="file"&gt;
  &lt;fileset dir="/web"&gt;
    &lt;include name="**/*.cgi"/&gt;
    &lt;include name="**/*.old"/&gt;
  &lt;/fileset&gt;
  &lt;dirset dir="/web"&gt;
    &lt;include name="**/private_*"/&gt;
  &lt;/dirset&gt;
&lt;/chmod&gt;</pre>

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